Featuring a distinguished group of soloists, the concerts will once again spotlight the talents of the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus.
The last time Opera Philadelphia's gathered audiences on the Kimmel Cultural Campus was January 2020, for a concert of Verdi's Requiem led by Jack Mulroney Music Director Corrado Rovaris. That event, gathering nearly 200 musicians from the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus on stage, was praised for its "carefully integrated, cumulative sound" (Philadelphia Inquirer) and was a highlight of a season cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rovaris will marshal the company's musical forces once again on Friday, Jan. 21 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 23, at 2:00 p.m., this time in the company's concert debut in Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center, for a program featuring Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex and George Walker's Lilacs. Featuring a distinguished group of soloists, the concerts will once again spotlight the talents of the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and Chorus. Stravinsky launched music's neoclassical movement, and according to no less a figure than Leonard Bernstein, Oedipus Rex was the most "awesome product" of the Russian composer's neoclassical years. A Handelian opera-oratorio for orchestra, narrator, soloists and male chorus, its Latin libretto was translated from Jean Cocteau's French interpretation of Sophocles' archetypal Greek tragedy. Despite its classical inspiration, however, there is a continuity between the dramatic grandeur of the work and Stravinsky's later religious ones. And although Oedipus Rex is seldom performed, its drama, wit, and consummate artistry does full justice to the composer's formidable legacy.For more information visit: https://www.operaphila.org/
Videos